"Tedious," "indecisive" and "overwhelmed by the process," are just some of the ways that lawyers who have appeared before U.S. District Court for the Southern District of Florida Judge Aileen Cannon are describing her as scrutiny grows over her handling of Donald Trump's obstruction of justice case.
In interviews with CNN, attorneys who have butted heads with her have pointed to her "isolation" in Fort Pierce as part of the problem for the now-controversial judge who had little practical courtroom experience before the former president handed her a lifetime job on the bench.
Speaking with CNN's Tierney Sneed and Hannah Rabinowitz, ten different attorneys who wished to remain anonymous had various opinions of Cannon, who admitted that her foot-dragging on the Trump case has them raising their eyebrows at her conduct.
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According to the report, "Several attorneys who have practiced in front of Cannon – and who spoke to CNN for this story – pointed to her isolation as one explanation for her conduct. Cannon’s solitary post in the Fort Pierce courthouse, one that rarely sees high-profile action, deprives her of the informal, day-to-day interactions with more seasoned judges who sit at the other courthouses and could offer her advice, the lawyers told CNN. They also said Cannon’s lack of trial experience, both as a lawyer and a judge, is apparent. In her seven years as a Justice Department attorney, Cannon participated on the trial teams of just four criminal cases."
According to one attorney, "She is not efficient. She is very form over substance," with another calling her "indecisive” and a third suggesting, "She just seems overwhelmed by the process.”
"As Cannon slowly plods through the backlog of issues on her plate, special counsel prosecutors are now learning firsthand the wrath that they can incur from the judge for seemingly minor discrepancies in their filings, and they have drawn Cannon’s ire for pushing her to move more quickly to resolve the substantive pretrial issues that have slowed the pace of the case to a crawl," the report states with yet another attorney lamenting, "You can’t really take issue with her, otherwise it’s going to work against you."
CNN's report adds that her inexperience also makes her vulnerable to time-wasting motions.
"Her approach as a jurist – detail-obsessed to the point of tedious – appears uniquely prone to being exploited by a defense team eager to delay the case. And the complicated system Cannon has set up for redacting public filings has only exacerbated a backlog of unresolved issues," CNN is reporting with one lawyer pointing out, " “She seems to seize on concepts that for one reason or another become interesting to her whether or not they’re pertinent to the case at hand – or decide that they have importance for reasons that escape the rest of the parties in the courtroom.”
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